Moving on

FOR a game so reliant on the power of positive thinking, Irish Open memories do not come much better than Shane Lowry’s.

The images of the soaked Offaly amateur raising his putter aloft in triumph at Baltray two years ago brought a cheer to Irish golfing hearts and for the player himself, surveying the scene remains a very happy thought in the mental locker that all golfers summon during the course of a round.

Yet aside from being two years older and having turned professional soon after that remarkable week, the 24-year-old feels he has moved on a long way since.

“Definitely it would be a positive thought but it feels like a long time ago now,” Lowry said. “It was just a dream, wasn’t it? The way it happened. I had been playing some good golf coming up to it but I didn’t expect to even get near. I went out to prove that I was good enough, ended up playing good golf all week and I was lucky enough to win.”

Lowry does not use his win at Baltray as a template for success now he’s full-time on the European Tour and the place he was in mentally that week is not a state he seeks to attain every week.

“No, it was just an unusual set of circumstances. If I look at my game now and the mental side of things, I know I’m a much better player now than I was then. Everything went right that week. I holed all the right putts at the right time, played some great golf and then went and shot a 62 on the Friday and beat my low score by about four shots.

“So everything kind of fell into place that week and I definitely feel I’m a much better player now, both mentally and physically.”

Not that everything has been discarded from that week and as the Irish Open comes around again, Lowry’s victory is still a moment in his still fledgling career that he will treasure for a long time yet.

Things were not looking good at the start of the year after Lowry fractured his wrist during a winter slip on ice. It was not until late March that the Clara man got his season underway and it was a while more until he hit the form he was looking for. It was late April, in China, before he made his first cut, in his fourth event of the year but there followed some rapid improvement, a 13th at the Ballantines Championship followed by 11th place at the Open de Espana and then a fifth place behind winner Darren Clarke at the Iberdrola Open in Mallorca, where Lowry posted a third-round 63.

It got better again the following week at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth when Lowry shot rounds of 69 and 67 on the weekend to seal fourth place in the European Tour’s flagship event and bag the biggest pay day of his golfing career, a cheque for €191,100 that secured his card for next season, his exemption as the 2009 Irish Open champion having been set to expire at this season’s end.

Also in that purple patch came his US Open debut after Lowry came through the international qualifying event at Walton Heath in Surrey, and though he narrowly missed the cut at Congressional Country Club after two arduous rounds, his bitter disappointment at an early exit was tempered by the good form he had otherwise shown having come into the campaign so late.

“I had a bad start to the year with my injury but I’ve done fairly well since,” he said. “I was planning on doing a lot more work during the winter than I obviously got done with the injury and it probably set me back two or three months of work on my game. When I got back I had to start doing a little bit of work on my game and start getting back into tournament play as well. That’s tough to make the little changes that I needed to make and that I wanted to make. So it did take a little while to get used to it and transfer it onto the course but thankfully I have now.

“But once it came it was brilliant. This is probably the best golf I’ve ever played in my career. In four out of five tournaments before the US Open I had top 15 finishes, fourth place at Wentworth, the best week of my career so far. Hopefully I can keep it up in the weeks to come as well.”

The work and changes Lowry did make with his coach Neil Manchip were essentially to his mental approach, which had manifested during his rookie season on the European Tour in 2010 into a certain kink in his game.

“I didn’t need to make too many changes at all. I just had a destructive shot in there, an ugly shot that came out when I was under pressure and I had to get rid of it. I used to hit the odd, bad, destructive, right shot that would cost me at least a bogey and more often than not a double, which was hard because it could kill a round of golf. I just needed to change a couple of very, very small things, not major at all.

“I’ve started playing more consistent golf this season and that destructive shot doesn’t seem to be there any more.

“My coach, Neil Manchip is very good on the mental side of the game. He gets me in the right frame of mind going out playing. It was a little bit to do with the mental side of things, believing in myself more than I had been doing and believing that I can compete at the top level.”

And with Ireland now boasting four major champions, competing at the top level for Lowry includes this week at Killarney.

“It’s a bit of an awkward date for it really, between The Open two weeks before and the PGA two weeks after, so it’s a tough week to come and play for the top players, but as long as all the homegrown players are there it’s going to be a strong Irish Open field. But hopefully a few of the top players from elsewhere can come and play as well and make it a better tournament.

“I think for years it’s always had a good name and been a great tournament and the crowds have always been fantastic; everything about the tournament is always great.”

Last year, on his first visit to Killarney, Lowry had the pressure of being defending champion and after a difficult start, two good rounds on the Friday and Saturday propelled him to a creditable 21st place finish.

“It was stressful enough,” he said. “When Wednesday evening came around I already felt like, ‘God, is this week ever going to end’, because it was a really long week. But it was all good. I had a lot of people down from home and following me but I had a bad first day and so I went out on the Friday trying not to let them down and making it to the weekend.

“And I did all right in the end, finished 21st, so it wasn’t too bad for my first ever title defence, especially after getting off to a poor start. Killarney’s a great place to hold a tournament, although I’d love to see an Irish Open played on a links. But as regards the whole set up, the tented village and the golf course and the town, there’s plenty of places to stay, and the whole atmosphere at the course and in the town during the evenings, it makes for a great tournament.”

Lowry said he felt at ease on the Killeen course but is looking forward to returning to what promised to be a more difficult set-up this time around.

“That was my first time playing it last year and it’s a decent course, a traditional parkland course and the scoring was low enough. Now the rough is going to be up a little bit, it should be interesting and the course is going to be a lot more difficult.

“And with the changes on the first tee, it means that opening hole is going to be very tough now. Last year, with no rough, we were hitting a driver and chipping onto the green. So it sounds as if it should be a good challenge this year.

“I’m not one of those players who goes around saying this course suits my eye better than this or that. I believe if you play well, any course suits you. But I drive the ball well and there’s quite a few wedges out there, so it probably should suit me because driver and wedge play are the stronger parts of my game.”